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Larry Ellison doesn't mince words when it comes to his competitors.

The Oracle ( orcl ) executive chairman on Wednesday described Amazon ( amzn ) and Microsoft ( msft ) as defeated rivals in cloud computingat least when it comes to the quality of their technology.

On an earnings phone call with analysts, Ellison said that Oracle now has a huge technology lead over Amazon Web Services and Microsofts Azure cloud computing service. Several times, he bragged that Oracles revamped cloud computing service is both cheaper and faster than the competition, and that it will eventually become Oracles crown jewel.

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The Oracle co-founder is known for his grandiose statements and prodding of his business adversaries. But his comments on Wednesday entirely glossed over the fact that both Amazon and Microsofts cloud businesses are growing rapidlyand inconveniently to Oracle, exponentially bigger.

In the latest quarter, Microsofts cloud business sales rose 8% to $5.9 billion. Meanwhile, Amazon's cloud business, which only includes computing infrastructure, and not software or database services, jumped 47% to $3.6 billion during the same period.

Oracle, on the other hand, said that its total cloud sales were $1.2 billion its latest quarter, a fraction of the size of its top two competitors. Although its quarterly cloud sales rose 62% from the previous year, Oracle still has a long way to pass Amazon and Microsofttwo companies that dont appear to be slowing down.

Oracles cloud software and developer tool business accounted for the bulk of its overall cloud sales with combined quarterly sales of $1.01 billion. But selling on-demand computing power to customers is where Ellison really wants Oracle to dominate.

Currently, so-called infrastructure-as-a-service is merely a speck compared to Amazons. Oracle's quarterly sales in that category was a diminutive $178 million in the latest quarter, up only 2% from the same period a year earlier.

A big concern for Ellison is if customers switch their existing Oracle databases to AWS, something Amazon has been heavily encouraging . Doing so makes those customers more inclined to use Amazons portfolio of cloud services rather than Oracles.

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At several points during the conference call on Wednesday, Ellison said that Oracle customers should run their Oracle databases in Oracle's cloud. Citing no source, he said that AWS can only handle "relatively small databases" compared to bigger ones that he claims will run "ten times faster in the Oracle cloud versus the Amazon cloud. Of course, Amazon would refute Ellison's description. And, in fact, Amazon has a long list of big customers who use its servers as a home for their huge databases.

It's unclear if big businesses will buy Ellison's sales pitch, but for now at least, investors seem to be.

Oracle's shares ( orcl ) rose 5.34% in after-hours trading on Wednesday to $45.38

Link:
Oracle's Larry Ellison Belittles Amazon and Microsoft - Fortune